Squats are my #1 favorite exercise, I do about 20 different kinds, weighted and non, but Golden Tortoise is still my favorite because it's a great one to challenge your friends with, and watch them drop on the floor in less than a minute.

I have seen body builders crumble trying the Gum Gwai Sic, because it tests muscles in interesting ways.

And then, I even kick it up a notch and do Golden Tortoise with weighted rings. I'm crazy about my squats. I will do Bulgarian, Hindu, and yes, even crazy ass ancient Daoyin squats like Golden Tortoise...this is why I have calf muscles the size of melons.

To be totally honest, that's not the "correct" form of the Golden Tortoise. I had a better picture of Grandmaster Lam Sai Wing but I would have had to scan it.

Normally, the head should be looking foward, and the body would be lower.

The quads and back are kept parallel to the floor, the knees are over the feet, and over the course of say, 1-2 years, you learn to lower yourself more and more. Again, don't compare it to the squats you know, this one is different. It opens up an enormous amount of flexibility in the groin, in addition to strengthening the legs, core, back, and glutes.

Oh, and it's pretty fucking deep all right. It opens up the whole "gwot", as they say, something that has, shall we say....certain non-martial applications. Kung fu wives understand.

Don't go by the picture, the picture sucks. Go by the burn of it yourself, or stop theorycrafting and comparing it to the one deep squat you probably know.

Sorry. Honestly.

Rabbit - is it a static hold or dynamic movement???

Any chance you've got access to a video of it if its dynamic? Looks like a good one to inflict upon some friends who play rugby.

Any chance you've got access to a video of it if its dynamic? Looks like a good one to inflict upon some friends who play rugby.

It's a static exercise used as conditioning and a template for later, more challenging dynamic exercises. The static hold can be done with the hands forward or reversed through the legs. The challenge is to learn to breathe properly through the initial discomfort, while learning to relax and let the muscles, ligaments, and tendons do their work properly.

New students find doing this for a minute very challenging, so you work your way up. Proper body alignment is important and learned over time, leading to a stronger, more stable position. It's common for new people to just have to break the pose to relieve the lactic acid discomfort in their quads etc. Advanced students can actually meditate in this position for 5+ minutes.

This is Hung Ga grandmaster Lam Sai Wing performing both forward and reverse Golden tortoise as part of the 7 Golden Passages (chut gum muen), a "warmup" qi gong routine.

Some traditional Hung ga instructors would line their students up in a row in this position, and walk across their backs to test their strength. Not done so much nowadays as I imagine the risk is too high of hurting someone's back.

The Shaolin-derived and Daoist-derived qi gong exercises actually include a lot of different "Squat-like" exercises with dynamic lower and upper body movement. This is one example from the 8 Brocade exercises.

The older name for these kinds of pseudo-gymnastics is "Dao Yin", "guided stretching", or Yang Sheng ("life nourishing").

This is a modern reconstruction of the 44 movements of "Daoyin Tu" ("exercise chart") from 168 BC.

There are a lot of variations of the 8 brocades but they generally contain the same basic movements. The static exercises like Golden Tortoise help build the foundation for the dynamic exercises in other sets, like Drawing the Bow.

The more traditional Shaolin forms look more like this.

Notice the sequence difference of the Drawing the Bow in Jake's set (#4/8), and the Shaolin Temple Europe version (#2/8). It shows how the sets can change over time depending on the instructor/lineage. In most versions I've seen (including the Tang Fong Hung ga version) the exercise is in the #2 position of the 8.

It'd be interesting to know if this is how Shaolin Do teaches the Brocades, because it would seem to indicate yet another conflict between "canonical" Shaolin methods and Shaolin Do methods.